For someone who dislikes motoring it may seem a little perverse to attempt to go a long way up the rivers Paraná and Paraguay, but the prospect of being able to travel 1,000 miles into the centre of a continent without taking the masts down was irresistible. My only source of information was the Admiralty pilot, which suggested that the river was lowest and hence the current least (about 2 knots) in the southern winter.
We spent a month on maintenance in San Isidro, a pleasant suburb of Buenos Aires, tied up in Puerto Pirates, a disused sand barge dock waiting for money to revitalise it: no mooring fees, water from the tap at the bus depot next door and electricity from a dubiously wired shared meter. This unusual arrangement attracts a wide variety of individuals who share an alternative life style. Over 10,000 sailing yachts are to be found in and around Buenos Aires, almost all belonging to one of the many yacht clubs. Traditionally these clubs provide all the moorings and services and consequently there are virtually no commercial marinas or boatyards. In the past, so few foreign yachts visited that many of the clubs were able to give generous hospitality. Now there are too many visitors for the limited berths available and finding a berth is not easy.
Towards the middle of August Carly and I set out in Pelican, a Freedom 33 I have converted to a junk ketch. We had an inauspicious start by running aground trying to get into a fuel dock, barely a mile from San Isidro. After getting off we filled up, not realising how few and far between would be the convenience of alongside refuelling. The first part of the trip is through the delta of the Paraná, a maze of narrow shallow waterways, the banks lined with weekend cottages to which many Portenos escape the summer heat. Regular high speed wooden launches run a bus service among the many islands. The cottages themselves vary enormously, from quite grand to tumbling down. Most have their own docks and the buildings are usually set on piles 2m above the low ground. A small rise in sea levels will make this whole area untenable. We anchored that night in a quiet side arm of the Rio Antonio, 9 km from San Isidro.
The following morning we motored out of the delta and joined the Rio Paraná de Las Palmas, one of the branches of the Paraná and a major shipping channel accessible to deep draught ships as far as Rosario, 350 km up stream. A SW breeze filled in later in the morning and we were able to sail for most of the day, anchoring for the night off the town of Zarate after a respectable run of 70 km. The next day was motoring until the engine overheated late in the afternoon, which forced us to anchor just outside the channel. The fresh water pump impellor had stripped its blades. I had two spare, now one, and only three days into the trip.
A couple of days later we arrived off the town of San Pedro, where a narrow channel led to the yacht club marina. It looked small and full so I decided to anchor off. After rowing ashore to the fuel dock we made our number with the gatekeeper who signed us into the club. It was a short walk up the steep bank into town, but, being Sunday, it was very quiet with most of the shops shut. Down in the park however it was much livelier with a Breton dance festival with accompanying asados (barbeques), beer tents and much Breton cake being sold. The next morning I topped up the diesel from the last fuel dock we were to see.
There were more engine problems next day when the bolts holding the raw water pump came lose and later its pulley wheel fell off. It took some time to find the key in the bilge, but I fixed it and we carried on.
Navigation on this part of the river was straightforward as it is well buoyed and we had up-to-date charts on a CD from the Argentine Hydrographic office. We mainly used the C-Map chart plotter and checked it against CD charts. The buoys are numbered by distance in kms from the River Plate so there was little excuse to get lost. The least current was outside the channel in shallow water, with the added advantage of being out of the way from the passing ships. However care is needed to avoid running aground, with a sharp eye constantly kept on the echo sounder.
We soon got into a routine, up at 0700, breakfast and then try to be underway by 0800. It was often pretty cold first thing so we did one-hour stints at the helm, extending them to two hours as the day warmed up. Lunch was had underway and we tried to find an anchorage before 1800 when the sun was starting to set. Each day’s progress depended a great deal on the wind. With a good following breeze we could do 70 kms, with a head wind and motoring that would be halved. It was often a case of sailing for a while until the river rounded a bend and then on with the engine until the wind freed at the next bend. We motored at 1800 to 2000 revs, which seemed a good compromise between fuel economy and distance made good. Refuelling was a real problem, towns were not that frequent and it meant walking quite a distance, with jerry cans, to find a filling station. Parsimony was also involved, not to mention use of the earth’s resources; it’s green to be mean.
The next place was San Nicholas, where a large steel works lay outside the town with several ships unloading iron ore. A narrow cut led off the river past crumbling brick docks and an old passenger steamer. The town was on the top of a steep bank with a very English looking clubhouse at the base. Across the channel behind reed banks could be seen many masts. As we were deciding where to go a dinghy motored out from the club and led us into a tiny docking area next to the clubhouse. There was only just room to turn and we lay diagonally across two berth. When I suggested that we were really too big for the berth, the marinero agreed and said there would be more room in the marina across the channel, but as we were only staying one night it was not worth moving.
The club was founded over 100 years before, for rowing, by British railway engineers, hence the clubhouse architecture. In this lower part of the river towns were relatively close together with grain silos and other installations spaced between them.
Two days north of San Nicholas was Rosario, Argentina’s third largest city. All its commercial wharfs are being revamped into waterside leisure facilities and condominium apartments with a long thin park running the length of the embankment. Prominent is a vast flag flying from a tall flagpole. This marks the battle-ship-size Monument to the Argentine National Flag (complete with museum), which provides insight into the reverence that Argentines hold for their flag.
We continued 7 kms past the city to tie up at the Club de Velas Rosario, which could not have been more welcoming and gave us a free berth for several days. Getting into town was not easy; the excellent bus service works with magnetic cards, which you can only buy in the city centre. The day was fine so we walked both ways along the lovely waterfront park. As Carly had visited Cuba a few years before we had to go and find Che Guevara’s birth place, an apartment building in the city. Grocery shopping and several trips to the filling station took up the rest of our time.
We had been under way for just over a week and were at km 400, a quarter of the way to Asuncion. We had been able to do a fair bit of sailing which meant that the need to refuel was not a big problem. The current had been about 4 kph, which was quite manageable. Provided the engine did not let us down, things looked promising.
On leaving the club we passed under a magnificent new suspension bridge, leaving behind sea going ships with now only barges to be seen. There was some Argentine and even Brazilian barge traffic but it was mostly Paraguayan, the river being their major import and export route. On average two or three barges a day passed each way. They consisted of a pusher tug and up to 15 large barges lashed three abreast. The tugs drew just under 3m, twice our draught. Navigation became more difficult as we were using the one-year-old latest edition of a book of chartlets. The chart plotter still showed the river, but no details or soundings and we were often travelling overland. Buoys were few and far apart. In many places there were low islands and some confusion as to which channel to take.
Although the engine was running fine the raw water pump continued to give problems, until one day its pulley wheel destroyed itself. The engine, a 1982 Yanmar 3GM, was supplied with raw water cooling, but with a heat exchange/fresh water cooling system from new. The temporary solution was to cool directly with river water, fresh but silty. We carried on with this until we got to Santa Fe at km 580. The old docks in the centre of town have been revamped into a shopping mall, a new hotel in an old grain silo and a sailing club, Club Marina Puerto Santa Fe. We hovered outside the rudimentary marina and were waved in to a berth. Once again generous hospitality was given. The immediate problem was to try and repair the water pump. My enquiries in bad Spanish were simplified when Augusto, a club member, was called over. He spoke excellent English and soon everything was organised. I fetched the pump and we drove off to an engineer, who could fix it but needed some parts. Back in the car we drove round to several shops and I guarded the car while Augusto bought the parts. The engineer said it would be ready by 1800. Augusto refused to take any money, but said ‘My friend runs the local TV station, would you do an interview for them?’ I thought my atrocious Spanish the perfect excuse to decline. ‘No problem, my daughter studies English at university and will translate for you.’ The pump was ready on time and seemed to work fine and the TV station seemed happy with the interview.
We carried on north but within two days the pump packed up again and it was back to river water cooling. La Paz looked an interesting place to stop but the current ran strongly past the town, there appeared to be nowhere safely to tie up and the river was much too deep to anchor. A few kms further on we ran into a shallow patch and could not find the channel. We crept forward with the echo sounder showing less than 2m depth. We wished for a barge to pass and show us the channel. Eventually the water deepened and some buoys were spotted in another branch of the river. A new channel had been formed taking a completely different route, which we should have turned onto several kms downstream of La Paz.
The next small town was Bella Vista at km 1060. We had a fresh following wind but we needed food and more importantly diesel. We anchored for the night off the town but the wind against current soon had us dragging into mid channel, necessitating re-anchoring in the lee of a sand bank across the river. The next morning the wind had eased so we anchored off the town again before going ashore. The first call was to the Prefectura (coastguard). The paperwork took nearly two hours. When we were eventually ushered into El Jefe’s office he more than made up for the frustration of waiting when he offered a photocopy of the latest changes to the channel ahead. Bella Vista is a pleasant sleepy riverside town, but it was a long walk out to the highway to get diesel. On returning to Pelican we found her slowly dragging back into midstream: time to leave.
Most nights we anchored outside the channel in shallows, choosing a bend in the river to get shelter from any fresh wind blowing. The barges kept going 24 hours using spotlights and doubtless a GPS track. We had got far enough north that the temperatures were getting pleasant. The scenery was nearly all rural but fairly flat land each side so not too much to see except trees and reeds on the banks. There was the occasional Estancia and often fishing camps with the fisherman tending bait lines from small rowing boats, hoping to catch catfish.
At km 1200 we came to Corrientes, nearly as far up the Paraná as we would go before turning onto the Rio Paraguay. A huge suspension bridge crosses the river linking the cities of Resistencia and Corrientes. As we passed under the bridge an old wooden motor cruiser joined us watching Pelican sailing wing and wong in the following breeze. They enquired if we were stopping in Corrientes; if so then we must stay at their club. That’s how we found ourselves on a mooring off the Club de Regattas and made a new friend in Fortuno. As well as the motorboat, which he was restoring, he had a fast looking 26-foot racing yacht. Fortuno was keen for us to stay in Corrientes for a month and join their regatta to Formosa and back. We did not have the time to do this but agreed to join in the race back on our way down from Asuncion.
During the few days we spent at Corrientes the river level was rising and the current increased noticeably, but we had been assured that it was all due to the Rio Paraná and there should be no problem on the Rio Paraguay. We struggled against the strong current and at the end of the day had to anchor just short of the confluence of the two rivers. The next morning we entered the Rio Paraguay at km1240, Argentina on the western bank and Paraguay on the eastern. The current decreased to about 3kph, the lowest we had experienced. The character of the river also changed, it being much narrower and a single channel with no islands.
The first settlement to be seen on the Paraguay side was Humaita, and prominent was the ruins of a church. This had been destroyed in the 1860s by canon fire in Paraguay’s disastrous War of the Triple Alliance, when it fought itself to a standstill over six years against the combined forces of Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay. By the end it had lost nearly half its territory and population with women outnumbering men three to one; it remains South America’s bloodiest conflict.
A couple of days later we anchored off the village of Cano, opposite the Paraguayan town of Pillar. A Prefectura boat came alongside and said we should anchor off the Prefectura building, it was much safer. This was not a request but an order, politely put. I went ashore with the ship’s papers and was given the advice that it would be dangerous to anchor anywhere for the next 60 kms due to drug smuggling activities. We would not have been able to do 60 kms on the Paraná in daylight, but with reduced current and a provident fair wind made our best day’s run, 70 kms before dark.
Our goal was now in sight and a couple of days of good wind brought us quickly up the river. On the Paraguay side there were extensive barge docks as we approached Asuncion. We cleared out of Argentina at Puerto Pilcomayo and crossed the river to Puerto Enramada to clear into Paraguay. Close by was the Hotel Marina Yacht Y Golf, recommended by Fortuno, It is in a small lagoon next to the port but we could not find any channel deep enough for us to get in. Instead we headed upriver to the Bahia de Asuncion, another lagoon off the city centre, where we anchored off the Presidential palace. We had taken 44 days to do 1600 kms and had used the engine for 152 hours, having sailed nearly two thirds of the way, much more than we could have hoped for.
We stayed a week in Asuncion and then Carly caught the bus down to Buenos Aires to meet her daughter Irene. 44 days by boat, 20 hours by road. Carly and Irene spent a week seeing the sights and then took a bus up to Formosa and to meet me.
What a pleasure it was going downstream; if there was any wind the engine was not needed as even short tacking gave good speed over the ground. The navigation was much simpler as I had made notes on the charts and also taken GPS waypoints for the tricky bits. A highlight one day was to see a flock of flamingos, all coral and black, pass overhead.
Carly and Irene’s arrival coincided with the start of the race back to Corrientes. The start was at 0800 and needed to be early because we had 120 km to sail to get through the ‘bad lands’ to Cano. Fortuno’s launch was the committee boat and had a problem with a rope around the propeller. By 0900 I felt we could wait no longer as we needed to get in before dark. so we retired from the race and set off at great speed downwind. We arrived by 1730 and anchored off the Prefectura. The first of the other boats came in well after sunset. The Sunday race was in two parts, down to Humaita first and then on to Paso de La Patria, at the confluence with the Rio Paraná. It was a beat and we were doing all right against the smaller racier boats when the Star class entry lost her mast. We dropped our sails and went to assist, but could only stand by as she drifted into the shallows. A centre boarder then went to the rescue and towed her off. They indicated that our help was not needed, but by this time it was too late to get to the start of the second race without the engine, so we retired again.
The passing of a cold front, with a gale force line squall, marred the second race. It was impossible to short tack against the wind and the vertical waves and under engine we hardly moved, but motor sailing with deep reefs proved the most effective. This was Irene’s first sailing experience and Carly was concerned she would not like rough weather, but she was clearly enjoying the exciting sail with spray flying. We anchored at sunset a few kms short of Paso de La Patria and missed the Sunday race back to Corrientes. At the prize giving that afternoon Pelican was not missed out, despite not finishing one race, true Argentine hospitality.
We all wanted to visit Iguazu Falls, and while still far away, Corrientes was the closest we would be. I asked Fortuno ‘Could we leave Pelican on a mooring off the club for a few days?’ He replied ‘No, it is too dangerous being exposed to north winds, but no problem I will arrange a berth for you at the small boatyard, across the river, where I keep the motorboat.’ This he did, then drove us to the bus station. Irene flew from Iguazu back to BA to catch her flight home. Carly and I returned to Pelican by bus.
The journey south was quick, usually making 100 kms a day and on one occasion 150. We stopped at the city of Paraná, about half way down, for a day, but otherwise kept going with good sailing on most days. The journey ended where it had started, at Puerto Pirate, at the end of October. The unexpected bonus had been how much of the time we were able to sail, the only disappointment how little wildlife we saw.